somnambulize
somnambulize verb: to sleepwalk; to somnambulate.
Verb
somnambulize (third-person singular simple present somnambulizes, present participle somnambulizing, simple past and past participle somnambulized)
- To sleepwalk; to somnambulate.
- If, however, he ceased at that time to somnambulize, he was given to waking dreams, a sort of lethargy and abstraction that became habitual to him, and after the accès was over, his eyes flashed, his lips quivered, his voice was tremulous with emotion, a sort of ecstacy came over him, and he talked...1847, Thomas Medwin, The life of Percy Bysshe Shelley: in 2 vol - Volume 1, page 34
- If a German who had acquired English should somnambulize, he would inevitably fall back upon the speech which he learned from his mother's lips, and to which his organs and his interior thought had always been attuned.1872, Edmund H. Sears, The Fourth Gospel The Heart Of Christ, page 88
- To put into a sleeplike or trancelike state.
- Physicians somnambulize their patients and extract teeth literally without pain.1967, Parke Godwin, A Biography of William Cullen Bryant
- First, the development of antipsychotic, neuroleptic drugs enabled medicine to stabilize (or somnambulize) mental patients outside the confines of institutions.1990, George T. Martin, Social policy in the welfare state, page 177
Examples of somnambulize in a sentence
- It is constantly active and traces of its activity will most likely remain stored, even if people who dream or somnambulize are not aware of it when fully awake.2015, Markus Iseli, Thomas De Quincey and the Cognitive Unconscious:
- Prolonged testimony from an expert witness using scientific abstractions and complex fact patterns will somnambulize most jurors.1993, Accident Reconstruction: Technology and Animation, page 257:
Forms of somnambulize
| third-person singular present | somnambulizes |
|---|---|
| present participle | somnambulizing |
| past participle | somnambulized |
| past | somnambulized |
| alternative form | somnambulise |
Origin of somnambulize
From Latin somnus (“sleep”) + ambulo (“to walk”), + -ize.
Questions about somnambulize
- What does somnambulize mean?
- Somnambulize means to sleepwalk; to somnambulate.
- How do you use somnambulize in a sentence?
- It is constantly active and traces of its activity will most likely remain stored, even if people who dream or somnambulize are not aware of it when fully awake.
- What part of speech is somnambulize?
- Somnambulize is a verb.
- What is the past tense of somnambulize?
- The past tense of somnambulize is somnambulized.
Words near somnambulize in the dictionary
Source and license
Adapted from Wiktionary: somnambulize (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.
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Cite this entry: “somnambulize.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/somnambulize. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.